“In what will prove to be a reference work of enduring value for the history of modern science, Professor Jaisson has compiled a complete list of the endowments, prizes, grants, and awards offered by the French Académie des Sciences from 1916 to 1996. […] In essence, then, this impressive resource opens a wide window on the history of science, particularly French science, in the twentieth century. Jaisson’s work represents a substantial and welcomed continuation of the standard and ever-useful works by Ernest Maindron (1881) and Pierre Gauja (1917) that trace the prizes and awards of the Académie from 1714.”“In two weighty tomes Jaisson’s database details 277 endowments, 105 of which existed prior to 1916, 172 of which postdate 1916. For each, Jaisson documents the legal creation and funding of the endowment, its object and purposes, periodicity of awards, dates of awards, and relevant award committees, and she names the recipients, their institutions, and the amounts of 8600 prizes and grants bestowed by the Académie in the eighty-year period under consideration.”“Jaisson adds a number of indices that make the massive amount of information contained in the body of this work immediately accessible. She provides an index of endowments, a name index, an extensive subject index, indices of institutions and scientific works mentioned, and a table that allows the easy conversion of monetary values of prizes in francs and ancien francs into 2001 euros. Jaisson prefaces her work with a short statistical study full of sociologically trenchant observations concerning the growing number of women awardees, the changing role of awards from crowning published science to directly supporting research, and the variability in the number and amounts of grants and awards over time.”